Birte Priebe
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Word of the Week: BUTERBROD - БУТЕРБРОД

24/6/2013

2 Comments

 
Picture
This week, one of the Russian "classics". In German, there is nothing more to a Butterbrot than the name suggests - bread and butter. In Russian, however, any kind of sandwich is a бутерброд (buterbrod). Usually, however, they are  rather elaborate open-faced sandwiches (not necessarily as inventive as the lovely animals above, though.) 

Interestingly, in Danish, the lavishly garnished sandwiches are famously called smørrebrød, which, if you translate it literally into German, means nothing more than Butterbrot! 

The picture is from www.sdelaysam-samodelki.ru.
2 Comments
Andrea
8/2/2017 10:01:09 pm

So what would be the plural of the Russian buterbrod? Or does the word act as both singular and plural. e.g. if you were to refer to 'a lavish selection of buterbrod' would this be correct? Should it be 'a lavish selection of buterbrody'? Or something else?

Reply
Birte
9/2/2017 05:36:23 am

Hi Andrea, the plural is indeed buterbrody (as in the picture above, but of course you would need to be able to read Cyrillic to see that.) "A lavish selection" of them would require the genitive - buterbrodov. To non-Russian ears, it is getting further and further removed from the German original!

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